My cousin's son is Autistic and he has had violent episodes in public. He was arrested and hogtied after trowing a tantrum in a public library. I told her that she needed to print out copies of his picture and take them to every police station in her area so that the police would at least be aware of his situation. He's a big kid and he has threatened harm on himself and on her and her husband. She refers to him as her "little one" because he has the mental capacity of a young child even though he looks like a grown man. She doesn't think anyone will hurt him. Okay. The police won't hesitate to shoot a black man exhibiting violent behavior in public? Right.

This is heartbreaking. This poor man. I'm sure he was so concerned for his patient. What if Rinaldo would have gotten scared and run off? These idiot cops would have shot another innocent man, this time one with autism that likely has no idea what's going on. At the very least, these cops need to lose their badges. If they're that nervous, unsure and trigger happy, than they shouldn't be in law enforcement with weapons.

This is disgusting. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to people, but these cops are making it harder and harder.

The police chief won't name names...okay. I actually saw a post on Twitter questioning why Charles Kinsey was wearing shorts if he is a professional counselor and maybe that's why he was shot because the cops didn't believe him. I couldn't believe it. It's Miami. Miami.

So in my town this week, there was a cop that shot a black man. The 21 year old man is claiming he was unarmed, and the cop shot him for no reason. However, video from the store parking showed him ramming his car into the squad car, thus was shot. This man is trying to jump onto the bandwagon for his 15 min of fame, which takes away incidents like Charles Kinsey.

The Miami cops were wrong and someone needs to be held accountable here.

Bystanders who saw what happened said that the 3 cops were sheltering behind trees, so they can argue that they couldn't see what he had in his hands. Despite them being told repeatedly that it was a toy truck. The cops will get out of this.

The police chief won't name names...okay. I actually saw a post on Twitter questioning why Charles Kinsey was wearing shorts if he is a professional counselor and maybe that's why he was shot because the cops didn't believe him. I couldn't believe it. It's Miami. Miami.

I lived in Miami for 6 years, everyone wears shorts. The fucking cops on the beach wear shorts. I worked in a professional office and we could wear shorts, as long as they were like a khaki-like Gap sort of shorts or a Bermuda style.

Originally Posted by ShimmeringGlow

The cop apparently feared for the therapist's life. Right. It took them this long to come up with that.

Oh, for real? They think it makes them sound better by saying they were aiming for autistic young man? Really? They would have sounded better if they said that they made a mistake and he shot by accident. Almost anything is better than that story.

Charles Kinsey explains in an interview from his hospital bed in Miami what happened when he was shot by police on Monday.

For a moment on Monday afternoon, Charles Kinsey said the three gunshot wounds to his leg felt like mosquito bites. Then he realized he’d been shot by a North Miami police officer, as he lay unarmed with his back to the ground and his hands in the air. Kinsey didn’t know why the officer shot him, and when he asked police, it appeared that the officer who pulled the trigger didn’t know either.

“He said, ‘I don’t know,’ and that’s it,” Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, said Thursday in an interview with The Huffington Post. Napoleon said this statement was also “overheard by other officers at the time.”

The incident is the latest in a string of controversial police shootings that have once again put law enforcement’s use of lethal force, particularly against black men, in the national spotlight. Many of these cases have been immediately accompanied by an official narrative that attempts to provide a reasonable explanation for a shooting. For example, suspects were supposedly armed, reaching for their waistband (or wallet), or lunging at police, leading officers to fear for their lives.

While the public may not accept these justifications as valid or even true, they often foreshadow the officer’s defense. In Kinsey’s case, however, the alleged initial response of the officer who opened fire ― as well as the vague statements given by authorities ― have only made the incident more concerning.

Minutes before the shooting, Kinsey, a 47-year-old behavioral therapist who is black, had rushed out of an assisted living facility in pursuit of an upset resident who has autism. Someone reportedly called the police about a man in the street with a gun threatening suicide. Officers responded and trained their weapons on the duo. In a video obtained by WSVN, Kinsey can be heard telling police that the only object in either of their hands is a toy truck the patient is clutching.

”My client was scared out of his mind, almost to the point of tears,” said Napoleon.

Then came the three shots.

North Miami police chief Gary Eugene offered few details about the shooting at a press conference Thursday.

“Our officers responded to the scene with that threat in mind,” he said. “At some point during the on-scene negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon, striking [Kinsey].”
The officer hasn’t been identified, but the “I don’t know” explanation got a massive revision on Thursday, three days after the shooting.

“Fearing for Mr. Kinsey’s life, the officer discharged his firearm trying to save Mr. Kinsey’s life,” said Miami Dade Police Benevolent Union president John Rivera. “He missed and accidentally struck Mr. Kinsey. He thought the white male and his actions were such that he felt Mr. Kinsey’s life was in danger.”

If this is the case, it’s unclear why officers felt they needed to handcuff Kinsey as he lay wounded in the street.

Rivera read a statement from the officer.

“I took this job to save lives and help people,” he said. “I did what I had to do in a split second to accomplish that and hate to hear others paint me as something I am not.”

This may be true, but it’s still unlikely to allay concerns from those who see the shooting as the latest example of careless and overzealous policing. And the fact that it’s coming from a police union official only further demonstrates how the system is structured to insulate officers from any legal repercussions for misconduct, whether deliberate or not.

Unions typically ensure that officers have plenty of time to prepare for investigations into their actions. As recently as 2014, interrogations of North Miami police were required to be held at “a reasonable hour, preferably while the accused is on duty,” according to the city’s collective bargaining agreement. Officers are entitled to have legal representation present, and under the 2014 contract, were allowed to delay an interrogation for days if preferred counsel was not available.

In other cities, unions have made it so that cops involved in shootings can always take several days to get their story straight before giving official statements. Critics say officers can use this crucial time to turn an “I don’t know” into a carefully crafted explanation for why they were acting lawfully when they used lethal force.

Napoleon wouldn’t speculate about how this dynamic might affect his case, but said he was encouraged by news that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was taking over the investigation. Still, he thinks the immediate response of the officer could be telling.

“He didn’t know that this would turn into international news,” said Napoleon. “That’s just however he felt at that particular point in ti

He's lucky to be alive, and beyond the whole not being dead and getting to go home to his family, the fact that he can tell his story is a really good thing. So many never get the chance. "Do what you're told and nothing will happen to you" is the mantra of the pro-police crowd, but it's pretty obvious that that doesn't work either. Power hungry losers with guns and badges who have so little accountability make me sick.

^Right, so what this means is, that besides being way too trigger happy considering the autistic guy was just sitting there and Mr. Kinsey was lying down with his arms raised in full view, this idiot cop apparently is a bad shot, too! Yeah, that's what we need, trigger happy cops who can't hit the stationary target they claim to be aiming at!!!!!

^^While Charles is explaining to them over and over that he's a behavioral therapist and this is his patient. Fucking hell.

I remember listening to Holly Robinson Peete, maybe after the Michael Brown shooting, and she was saying how she really fears for her son. A young, black, autistic man living in Beverly Hills (or something like that). Autistic people don't communicate in the same way. Nice to know that the cops were planning on shooting him because he had a toy truck and thought he was possibly going to harm the man on the ground. What a load of shit.

I know some (many?) of you will disagree, but I do believe most officers are good guys, trying to do their job of protecting the public. I know every day we hear about yet another incident of trigger happy officers shooting for no valid reason. But I do believe these do NOT represent how most police officers act. But unfortunately, it's always a few that make everyone look bad.
One of my best friends is married to a police officer & he is a genuinely good man who cares about his community. She is terrified every day that he goes to work, especially after the shootings here in Dallas.